take a stop the bleed course. get to know your neighbors. Organize in your community. learn about storing food and filtering or otherwise obtaining fresh water. explore radio / ham comms. learn about disaster preparedness. Volunteer.
While hands-on practice with an instructor is preferable, there is a virtual stop the bleed course available from the American College of Surgeons at no cost. https://www.stopthebleed.org/training/online-course/
Just to be clear - if you CAN get to an in person class, do it. But if you're waiting at all because of timing/distance/whatever, just do the online course. Very much a "don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good" deal.
My advice: You don't need to take your cel phone everywhere, consider documenting things from a camera or gopro. Also, make sure you don't record anybody getting into good trouble, and for the love of all that is good, don't ever talk about it, ESPECIALLY on the internet. *This is NOT about clout.*
Any quick resources you could point us to RE:food storage/water filtering? Cursory glance is tough to weed out who is just trying to sell something vs who is giving genuine advice
OTOH, activated carbon filters typically work on an array of chemicals (not all) and not pathogens.
A still that creates distilled water removes certain chemicals and pathogens but not all, and legality varies, but can potentially be assembled from random spare parts.
My personal experience camping and traveling in countries with poor water sanitation is, bag filters with a detachable spout work great (mine is Sawyer) for travel because you can fill in a sink or fountain. Gravity or pump filters (eg MSR) work better for camping where there is no sink.
low cost options for food storage for me have been fermenting and dehydrating in the oven (and freezing but this is less useful without a fridge). i don’t have links, it was really hard to find any info that didn’t require me to buy stuff. i just experimented til it worked, lmk if you want advice
Anyone in New York needing naloxone, drug test strips, or sterile syringes/safe injection supplies can access them for free on our website: https://mattersnetwork.org/supplies
^^^ cant ever have too much, ive heard folx come back from the dead after 8+ doses. a lot of these same organizations will also offer free fentanyl testing strips and free sharps containers which are just good to have on hand imo
If you ever need a sharps container and can't get your hands on one, gatorade bottles work great. I have actively tried to stab a brand-new needle into those and can't. (I recap my needles besides)
Liquid laundry soap containers are excellent too (same thing).
Yes, by law anything transmitted on HAM frequencies has to be open and public. You can't use encryption of any kind on those freqs. A useful skill to have, but there is zero expectation of privacy.
Oh yeah, around here the HAMs would love nothing more than to locate someone unlicensed or someone they thought was a problem. And they do foxhunts all the time for fun, so they have the skill and equipment.
I feel like watching their parents & friends die preventably without their meds, due to SSA disruption homelessness, etc. might sort that out fairly quickly. At least for some.
There's going to be a lot more if they go through with proposed FCC deregulations, too. The barrier to use being the various tests (which aren't too hard, just needing to be done).
Comments
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZ_9BZQ8gpzi-mYsS5WkImxI1VbJcY1dG&si=wv4CKZpEFbWeGe7I
you can only do so much yourself and you can offer so much more than you know.
the more people you have the greater your chances are of surviving.
but with other people you can let others pick up what you are bad at and provide what you are good at.
https://www.stopthebleed.org/training/online-course/
Beyond that, it kind of depends on what the conditions are: many camping filters are inexpensive and work against pathogens, but not chemicals.
A still that creates distilled water removes certain chemicals and pathogens but not all, and legality varies, but can potentially be assembled from random spare parts.
If I were concerned about particular chemicals (eg lead or fracking) I would research those specifically.
https://www.clorox.com/learn/water-purification-how-much-bleach-purify-water-for-drinking/
Harm reduction saves lives!
Liquid laundry soap containers are excellent too (same thing).